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Wednesday, December 24, 2008

A Christmas wish for you and the children in your life

The season of Advent has passed quickly by for me this year, partly because I've been kept busy in the company of some children that I love very much.

Christmas is such an exciting time of year for little ones, and for those of us that are little at heart. Patrick Kavanagh, a Irish poet born in County Monaghan in 1904, put his memories of his sixth Christmas into the form of a poem. I hope you'll enjoy reading about his childhood Christmas memories as you celebrate.

A Christmas Childhood

by Patrick Kavanagh

One side of the potato-pits was white with frost— How wonderful that was, how wonderful! And when we put our ears to the paling-post The music that came out was magical.

The light between the ricks of hay and straw Was a hole in Heaven's gable. An apple tree With its December-glinting fruit we saw— O you, Eve, were the world that tempted me

To eat the knowledge that grew in clay And death the germ within it! Now and then I can remember something of the gay Garden that was childhood's. Again

The tracks of cattle to a drinking-place, A green stone lying sideways in a ditch Or any common sight the transfigured face Of a beauty that the world did not touch.

My father played the melodeon Outside at our gate; There were stars in the morning east And they danced to his music.

Across the wild bogs his melodeon called To Lennons and Callans. As I pulled on my trousers in a hurry I knew some strange thing had happened.

Outside the cow-house my mother Made the music of milking; The light of her stable-lamp was a star And the frost of Bethlehem made it twinkle.

A water-hen screeched in the bog, Mass-going feet Crunched the wafer-ice on the pot-holes, Somebody wistfully twisted the bellows wheel.

My child poet picked out the letters On the grey stone, In silver the wonder of a Christmas townland, The winking glitter of a frosty dawn.

Cassiopeia was over Cassidy's hanging hill, I looked and three whin* bushes rode across The horizon — The Three Wise Kings.

An old man passing said: 'Can't he make it talk'— The melodeon. I hid in the doorway And tightened the belt of my box-pleated coat.

I nicked six nicks on the door-post With my penknife's big blade— There was a little one for cutting tobacco, And I was six Christmases of age.

My father played the melodeon, My mother milked the cows, And I had a prayer like a white rose pinned On the Virgin Mary's blouse.